Famous Texas baseball team the Texas Rangers just filed for bankruptcy. This dumb sports franchise in Texas owes “between $100 and $500 million” to its creditors. What does this mean, and how is it George W. Bush’s fault? Bush Junior “bought” the Rangers in 1989 by ponying up only $600,000 while his daddy’s oil buddies cronyed up the real money — and when the team was sold a decade later, Dubya walked away with $15 million.

Just like America, the Rangers built up huge piles of debt over the next decade. And now, just like America, the world-famous Texas Rangers baseball team has gone bust. (The Rangers are mostly famous for trading Sammy Sosa, which was George W. Bush’s big idea. Bush later ordered the invasion of Iraq.) [Rangers Blog]

Not to mention A-Rod. Didn’t he belong to the “Rangers” at one time or another?

JMP

And yet, the investors will continually blame the current Rangers owners for the debt while pretending the original debt created by Bush never happened.

Manos: Hands of Fate

I blame Pelosi. And Reid.

Big Liver

Grasping the enormity of this man and his presidency is like trying to swallow a tennis ball.

TGY

How about that? W did learn one lesson: first you pillage, then you burn.

rocktonsammy

And they call the Palins a bunch of grifters.

CrunchyKnee

No pepper games.

x111e7thst

The only solution is for Texas to secede. What are they waiting for.

Panquake

[re=583567]rocktonsammy[/re]: Grifters are nouveau riche. Professional scam artists like the Bushes are old-school fuckups.

bitchincamaro

When the best thing about your ballpark is the view of the distant “hypercoaster” at Six Flags, chapter 11 is inevitable.

RoscoePColtraine

How do you bankrupt a baseball team?

iwillsavethispatient

Last time I looked, they were leading the AL West. So, spend lots of money you don’t have on players to win more games is the theory apparently.

Basically, it’s cheating. I expect the MLB to act*. They should take away their wins and give them to the Mariners instead. Lord knows the M’s need ‘em…

* HA!

Lascauxcaveman

[re=583561]V572625694[/re]: Yeah, I split the blame equally between A-Rod and whoever the guy was that decided he was worth $250 million. That’s a f&ckup that even W didn’t have the genius for, back when he held the reins.

hockeymom

I’m hoping that the entire Bush family is the product of some sort of “sideways reality”, ala Lost. And that none of this ever happened and there’s some other kind of universe without Katrina, 9/11 and the Rangers.

keyrock

What are you idiots talking about? George Bush has had nothing to do with this team for years. Tom Hicks borrowed 525 million to buy this this team when money was cheap and now does not want to make the payments to service the debt. Hicks wants to make the debtors renegotiate and this is business.

Decker

It’s amazing they could fuck things up so badly considering they stole most of the land for their ballpark through eminent domain. And there’s the basic lesson of the Bush years – “Never underestimate a Republican’s ability to get a pile of money for themselves and leave a smoldering wreck for everyone else.”

freakishlystrong

He is taint. And everything he touches is tainted. Utter. Tainted. Taint.

magic titty

And their current manager does coke. What does GWB have to do with that I wonder?

Hey Decker who wanted to regulate Fannie and Freddie? Sure was not Clinton, Barney Frank or Chris Dodd. John Mcain brought legislation to the floor during Clintons’s 1st term to regualte Freddie and Fannie and keep them more accountable but all the liberals got mad saying he was a racist and did not want poor people to become home owners. Freddie and Fannie( big govt owned slush fund) are the real reason for the home market and credit crash. I agree Bush did some dumb things like Medicare part d but they were more liberal programs than conservative programs. How is socialism working in Europe these days?

GeneralLerong

[re=583581]Decker[/re]: So, uh, when do we riot?

GeneralLerong

Someone cover keyrock with poo paper.

dum librul

“and when the team was sold a decade later, Dubya walked away with $15 million.”

Strategery.

Panquake

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: OHHHHHHHH, SO KYUUUUUUUT! Ken, can I keep him?

JMP

[re=583574]RoscoePColtraine[/re]: They did sell stadium naming rights to Enron, then paid a shitload to buy them back.

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: And…? It’s great how morons like you keep ranting about Freddie and Fannie whenever the mortgage crisis is brought up, even though they were just a small side story and were victims of the crisis. But no, Republicans won’t accept free market failures and so keep bringing them up so they can try to blame the government instead of the big banks that caused the whole thing.

Jim Demintia

ARBUSTO!

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Go sell stupid some place else. Can you honestly pretend in this year of our Lord 2010 that derivatives didn’t exist and that the financial crisis was caused by black folks buying houses? Go fuck yourself, cretin.

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: maybe they practiced their strategy with the Rangers. It’s not easy to say “owe between 100 and 500 million” with a straight face, you know!! Especially when you’re still, heh, “doing the laundry”!

bored with gravity

[re=583593]JMP[/re]: Nope, that was the Astros. They now play in “Minute Maid Park.”

SayItWithWookies

Hmmm…how long would it take to fill a bankrupt baseball team’s stadium with oil at the rate of 800,000 gallons a day? They could charge BP rent, and we’d be rid of two odious excrescences at one pop. You’re welcome, and the Nobel Committee knows where to find me.

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Ooh Oooh I really REALLY need some private advice on how to handle my mortgage delinquency issues. You sound SO KNOWLEDGEABLE!!1!1 Are you free to help? Must be able to travel, and must have cop killing sidekick for when the shit gets real.

ForTheTurnstiles

W was able to walk away with 15 million only because he was able to sucker the locals into building him a stadium. New digs are built, value of the team rises, he sells; new digs get old and team is bankruptable again. Not complicated. See: Neil deMause, _Field of Schemes._

The real blame should be placed on the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forced the Rangers to install between $100 and $500 million in stadium wheelchair ramps and take down their “whites only” entrance signs. Talk about government overreach!

Oblios Cap

[re=583590]GeneralLerong[/re]:

It appears that your wish has been granted. Don’t idiots like him know better than wander in here and start shitting all over the place?

Scarab

[re=583599]BlueStateLiberal[/re]: I’m going with white guy in his early 40s, 60-pounds overweight, drives a huge SUV, wears ‘Big Dog’ tee-shirts, loves Buffalo wings, thinks his goatee hides his triple chin, small penis, knows his live sucks, scared and looking for someone to blame besides himself. But I’m just guessing.

ForTheTurnstiles

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Apropos of Bush’s mistakes: would you characterize a three trillion war on false pretenses and for no purpose a “conservative” or a “liberal” program?

And would you please sell me some magic beans? Magical gold coins are too expensive these days.

Mr Blifil

[re=583580]keyrock[/re]: If you love George Bush so much, you should consider taking your dick out of his rectum for a few minutes YOU ARE HURTING HIM!!!1!

RoscoePColtraine

[re=583580]keyrock[/re]: “…borrowed 525 million to buy this this team when money was cheap…”

When they bought the team, the Rangers were playing in an old minor-league stadium. It didn’t have the fancy sky boxes and other amenities that helped make other franchises much more profitable. As a result, the team couldn’t compete with other big-city teams for good players. But the new owners weren’t willing to finance the construction of a new ballpark . They decided to hit up taxpayers for the money.

First, the new owners threatened to move the team out of Arlington, Texas, sending local officials scurrying to put together a deal they couldn’t refuse. Under the resulting agreement, the taxpayers of Arlington would raise $135 million, the bulk of the cost of construction, through a hike in sales taxes. During a campaign to sell the sales tax increase to Arlington voters, then-mayor Richard Greene said the team owners would put $50 million of their own money into the deal up front. It didn’t quite work out that way; the owners raised a hefty portion of their down payment from fans, through a one dollar surcharge on tickets.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitize mortgages made by banks, they do not sell mortgages themselves. It’s these risky mortgages, mostly but not completely made in the subprime markets, that have been the big problem. Fannie and Freddie had to keep underwriting them because of shareholder pressure to maintain profits, since even though they are government-sponsored, they are actually owned like publicly-traded but private corporations.

In other words, it was the predatory lending practices of banks that led to bad home loans, not Fannie and Freddie. I know it makes you feel better to blame the dark hordes buying homes in your suburb, but you should try not getting all your financial analysis from Hannity.

iwillsavethispatient

[re=583587]Lascauxcaveman[/re]: But the Mariners aren’t going bankrupt, as far as I know. There should be punishment for going into bankruptcy. See Portsmouth this year in the EPL. If the suit-wearing buffoons in the FA realize this, surely the suit-wearing buffoons in MLB can work this out too?

FMA

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: I don’t know about Fannie, but Freddie Mac sucked. Guy hit a mere .074 with men in scoring position and his fielding percentage was off-the-charts awful.

ForTheTurnstiles

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: before I forget:

YOU FORGOT POLAND, ASSHOLE

azw88

[re=583568]CrunchyKnee[/re]: True, but we have a SALT II treaty that allows for other fun games, though in limited number of warheads and yields

Ken Layne

Boy you guys just ran off that poor “keyrock” quicker than a pig whistlin’ Yellow Rose of Texas, or something. SERIOUSLY THIS IS WHY CATS TAKE THEIR *TIME* KILLING THE LIZARD.

V572625694

[re=583617]chascates[/re]: Are you saying taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for new stadia so jock-sniffing zillionaires can hob-nob with sweet sweaty young athletes? If so, please tell San Diego’s city gummint the same thing — they’re about to pony up half a billion for the wonderful, wonderful Chargers, who are butt-hurt that they don’t have a new stadium like the cool kids do.

[re=583621]FMA[/re]: Bernie Mac was kinda fun, though, in small doses.

FMA

[re=583630]Ken Layne[/re]: Yeah, but this was a pretty slow-moving, retarded lizard.

Troubledog

[re=583636]V572625694[/re]: you had me at ‘stadia’

chascates

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair08312004.html
As team president, Bush printed up baseball cards with his photo on them in Ranger attire, endulging his life-long fetish for dress-up fantasies. He would hand out the Bush cards during home game. Invariably, the cards would be found littering the floors of the latrines, soaked in beer and piss.

RoscoePColtraine

[re=583630]Ken Layne[/re]: I would NEVER mistreat a defenseless lizard!!!

(Unless, of course, the fun of it were to prove irresistible.)

Darkness

and when the team was sold a decade later, Dubya walked away with $15 million.

Yeah, but but but, Whitewater! Or something.

FMA

[re=583651]chaste everywhere[/re]: Bernie Mac was great in “Bad Santa.”

comicbookguy

[re=583660]chascates[/re]: Bush dressed up in a Rangers uniform in front of a Mission Accomplished banner would be quite a collectors item.

Darkness

[re=583636]V572625694[/re]: Stadium funding was the first big sign we were living in a Kleptocracy. And, hey look, we still are!

Baldar T Flagass

[re=583673]Darkness[/re]: Yeah, it’s pretty outrageous when they expect us to pay for the venues in which to receive our bread and circuses.

Panquake

[re=583630]Ken Layne[/re]: WE ATE THE WHOLE DAMN PIZZA AT ONCE AND NOW WE ARE FUCKING FAT.

DangerousLiberal

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Freddie and Fanny were all that was responsible for the housing bubble crash? Nothing about predatory lending? CDOs backed by shitty mortgages? Members of Congress being bought and paid for by banks?

It’s like saying that New Orleans flooded because of that slut Katrina, the end.

Suds McKenzie

“Pinch Hitting, number #9, … Oliver Stone”

Mr Blifil

[re=583686]Baldar T Flagass[/re]: I believe that is known in the corporate meeting rooms as: “the genius part.”

libwakman

keyrock says at 11:50 am, May 24th, 2010

“What are you idiots talking about? George Bush has had nothing to do with this team for years. Tom Hicks borrowed 525 million to buy this this team when money was cheap and now does not want to make the payments to service the debt. Hicks wants to make the debtors renegotiate and this is business.”
Yea..don’t play the blame game keynutz.
And PS: Please to go fist fuck yerself.

McDuff

Jebus Hayzoos Christi, I thought that was a picture of Will Ferrell.

Georgia Burning

[re=583580]keyrock[/re]: Hicks is also W’s neighbor. The differences between Texas land investors’ and NYC “welfare queens” in their scamming local governments are geographical location and magnitude of the take.

norbizness

This empty shell of a dry-drunk goofus has scuttled so many things, they should call him Scuttlebutt.

Accordion-o-rama

[re=583576]iwillsavethispatient[/re]: The M’s would then trade the wins, plus Felix Hernandez, to Oakland for a 3rd round draft pick.

The M’s are like MLB’s version of trickle-down economics.

WadISay

[re=583580]keyrock[/re]: Hicks wants to make the debtors renegotiate and this is business.

Correction: W only put up $125,000 of his own money. He got the rest of the $600K from what was essentially a zero-interest loan from a Bank on which the usual suspects sat on the board of directors. For this grand total of $125K he got 10% of the ballclub, which in turn cashed out for more than $60 million after a taxpayer-built ballpark was re-deeded to the club (following liberal use of eminent domain to take over existing private businesses and lands on which to build the ballpark).

So you see, it’s all Obama’s fault, really. Bush was just following the American dream: to make a fortune with other people’s money.

Jukesgrrl

[re=583630]Ken Layne[/re]: “cronyed up the real money” Hey, you coined a word form! And a useful one, too. Give yourself a raise.

Bush fuck-ups (a partial list): tax cuts for the rich, 9/11, Afghanistan, No Child Left Behind, Enron, Iraq, Medicare Part D, Guantanamo, John Roberts, Clear Skies, Katrina, Sam Alito, the Great Recession and TARP. You can’t try and disown him after he implemented the Republican platform.

PS You’re cognitive dissonance is dazzling. The problem is Clinton didn’t regulate enough (true), so we need to embrace “conservative” principles like deregulation? Stupidity like yours is why Europe can compete with us despite fewer natural resources, language/ national barriers and the Greeks.

chaste everywhere

[re=583670]FMA[/re]: Right you are! How could I forget?

Hooray For Anything

Nope, this ain’t on Bush. Hicks spent way too much money on the Rangers thinking he could make them the Texas Yankees, something he tried to do by giving ARod the biggest contract in baseball history, then made the brilliant decision to buy bought the Dallas Stars– because we all know Texans love them some hockey– and then borrowed a ton more money to buy Liverpool in the Premiere League– because as we all know, Texans know and love them some soccer. In other words, Hicks is an idiot.

Bush has gotten a pass, however, for doing nothing when Jose Canseco was running steroid labs in the Rangers locker room and helping to kick off the steroid era.

Gorillionaire

One more punchline to the whole laugh-to-keep-from-crying-story…Dubya didn’t even pay taxes on the 15 mil that he walked away with. He only paid a 15 percent capital gains tax even though he “earned” his money “working” as a “consultant” (i.e. his family and political connections got him a job jerking off everyone that could scam a buck). The rules are different for auditing governors and presidents so likely he will never ever ever have to own up to this.

chascates

[re=583970]Gorillionaire[/re]: Hedge fund managers also only pay 15% on their earnings I understand. NPR mentioned several of them made over a billion last year and one made 4 billion. To ask them to pay any more than 15% insults the memory of Ronald Reagan.

Abou Diaby

What’s funny about fucktards like keyrock is that they consider themselves smarter and more productive than the hordes of negroids and illegals he so loves to criticize.

Tundra Grifter

[re=583581]Decker[/re]: So those same jackasses who don’t understand that the Kelo decision was in favor of states’ rights and local authority, and who just happen to think President Bush (43) was such a winner, actually supported somebody who personally benefited from private property being taken by the gov’ment for private for-profit development?

You expect me to believe that?

Just because it happens to be true?

Tundra Grifter

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Just because you heard it on ClusterFox doesn’t mean it was true. Do you understand most sub-prime residential lending was outside the Federally-regulated system? That many (particularly minority) sub-prime borrowers already owned most or all of their homes, and then lost them thanks to terrible loan terms? Do you know how many sub-prime liar loans went to speculators and investors who rented them out when they couldn’t flip them?

But hey, let’s make it very simple. Do you understand anything about anything?

That’s what I thought.

Tundra Grifter

[re=583660]chascates[/re]: Does that mean my cool card of him all dressed up in his cute little green plastic suit with the cod piece prancing around the flightdeck of the USS Lincoln isn’t worth very much? I paid G. Gordon Liddy a hundred dollars for it…

Tundra Grifter

[re=583653]FMA[/re]: Like the scorpion the little Mexican kids are burning at the beginning of “The Wild Bunch?”

From the Manufacturer
George W. Bush Talking Action Figure has a 2 minute audio chip allowing it to speak 25 different phrases in the President’s own Voice! Figures are limited in production and include an individually numbered certificate of authenticity.
Product Description
Straight from the Oval Office comes this collectible line of Talking President Action Figures. Standing proud at 12″ tall, George W. Bush features amazingly accurate and life-like detail.
Features:

Two-minute audio clip allowing 25 different phrases in the President’s voice
Individually numbered certificate of authenticity
Biographical pamphlet that includes rare photos and a comprehensive timeline
Era-accurate clothing that has been hand-tailored to fit the figure
Attractive display box and fully adjustable stand for displaying figure outside of the box

One Flew Over the Wingnut

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: Okay dittohead, I’ll give you your due. No matter how many times this little meme which was yanked from Limbaugh’s taint some dumb wingnut still emerges to test it out. I’m guessing you’re not even aware of what Fannie and Freddy’s functions are. They BUY ALREADY CREATED MORTGAGES, THEY DON’T LEND, IDIOT. The meme that heroic Repulicans were trying to regulate these out-of-control big gummint entities is bullshit. The object wasn’t to regulate high risk subprime mortgages to prevent a crash as your empty-headed revisionists claim, it was because their “free market” banker allies were bitching about Fannie and Freddy’s existence in THEIR markets. Actually, in point-of-fact the GOP wanted to further deregulate high-risk mortgages and derivatives and getting Fannie and Freddy out would create a “dark market” like the other nasty little Phill Gramm-made financial markets which caused much of the damage.

So your BIG argument means exactly shit; all it says is you like every other pasty conservative will go to any extreme to pin the failures of your beloved “free market” philosophy onto the government because you can’t accept how wrong your own ideas are. Oh and Fannie and Freddy aren’t non-profits, they’re subsidized. In fact their own existence in that fat pig and corrupt swill trough known as “the subprime market” was shown from internal memo’s to be a business decision based upon the obscene profits the large corporate banks were making. As others have pointed in here, they were a victim of fat, corrupt and misanthropic corporate scammers just like the millions of other borrowers who’ve now been squeezed out of their homes at lender PROFIT. Try to justify that one, wingnut.

One Flew Over the Wingnut

Keyrock is so typical of contemporary wingnuts. No matter how many times this meme about the financial collapse being all Fannie and Freddy’s fault is debunked they still use the talking points. Why? well social science analyzed the media consumption of so-called conservatives and teabaggers. The empirical facts produced were well, not very flattering for idiots who complain about liberals being sheep. Self identified conservatives and tea party members overwhelmingly get their news from extremely biased and credibility free outlets like Drudge, Fox, Rush, Hannity, Beck, O’reilly et. al. Overwhelmingly they reject sources not contained within their little cone of ignorance. Instead, the studies show they prefer overwhelmingly news sources who do not challenge but only re-inforce their standing views.

Simply stated, they aren’t actually aware of studies that have demonstrated Fannie and Freddy’s actual roles in the mortgage collapse or facts that prove in fact deregulation and the greed of wallstreet speculators, money men and financiers collapsed the U.S. economy. These stories and investigations are not contained in their tiny information bubbles and any stories carrying them are denounced by their untrustworthy yet trusted sources as being “biased”. It’s a rare sight indeed to see a Republican whom actually acknowledges the failures of deregulation in fostering corporate cultures of dark dealing in dark markets. It’s even rarer to find a conservative willing to admit tax cuts are not a cure-all for this wobbly, shakey economy. The fact is, Keyrock what you take as being “proven” is unproven, the economic mathematical models always collapse and produce outliers and extrapolations when confronted with the “human effect” of corruption.

These models are only suitable under “ideal” conditions and they have huge blindspots. This explains why “free-market” capitalist economists were caught completely by surprise in the collapse of finance which they’d been deregulating steadily for decades. These models have never been tried as a means to fix a depression, they’ve only been demonstrated to eventually trigger them because they are irrational and ABSTRACT, not realistic. The fact is, corporate greed exists, always has existed and always will exist. 50+ years since the Chicago School’s Milton Freidman produced the first criticisms of Keynsian modeling the same essential problem exists: greed under any name is still greed and greed left unchecked and operating outside the bounds of rules destroys.

I won’t even pretend for you to understand my criticisms; all you need to know is that financial markets are unstable and without strict rules of conduct and protection for consumers they always collapse and drag the economy into recessions and depressions. The Great Depression had many “tremors” indicating imminent collapse which were ignored by the laissez faire orthodoxy of the 1920’s; this was repeatedly almost exactly in contemporary times. So before you bloviate, learn something or as elequently said by others, “tits or GTFO”. Also.

Accordion-o-rama

[re=584089]chascates[/re]: Am I to gather from this that the shorter Shrub is 12 inches tall?

One Flew Over the Wingnut

George Dubya left a turd the size of Texas on the US and his own family. It’s really hilarious that his presidency was SO BAD that his entire family is persona non grata in electoral politics for at least a generation, probably more. Yet wingnuts like keyrock and the “Missed me yet?” billboard clown have been hungering to shift the blame for his amazing uber fuckups onto Obama. Now it’s Obama’s fault we’re drowning in debt, not that Bush cut taxes for millionaires ad nauseum until government revenues have shrunk to the point that when his other fuckup, massive deregulation combined with 30 years of massive dergulations destroyed the economy we’d go into more massive debt trying to stave off utter collapse.

Dubya ignored global warming, invaded Iraq based upon fabrications, ignored hurricane Katrina utterly and tried to pass one of the most discriminating constitutional amendments in U.S. history into law. He tortured, he allowed political operatives to create policy, then refused to study the effects his policy was having on the US. This role was outsourced to the notoriously unreliable Heritage Foundation. He undermined transfer of power in Palestine after free elections, a move HE demanded as a roadmap to peace by plunging Hamas and Fatah into civil war. He fucked up post-war Iraq by ignoring military advice in favor of Rumsfeldian fuckups like sending 130,000 troops into to take and pacify a country of 25 million.

He sided with anti-science creationists over credible science in evolution. He turned the Civil Rights enforcement section of the Justice department into a mockery of itself as they prioritized anti-christian “religious discrimination” and “reverse discrimination” nonsense over actual religious discrimination and anti-minority hiring practices. In early 2001 he created the terrorism task-force which never met. He ignored ominous warnings about increased terrorist chatter before 9.11. He let delusional assholes like General Boykins ply their trademark psychotic wannabe crusade in the Middle East; he did the same with Blackwater. I can go on and on all week of ideas and policies Bush created or enacted which rolled by pollution standards, workplace safety and employee protections all in service to his corporate friends.

Did Bill Clinton contribute to this debacle? absolutely but here’s the thing…Bush presided over the entire rise and fall of US finance and never once did his administration respond to or even allege financial misdoings in the markets. It wouldn’t have taken a great detective to see what needed to be fixed but he lauded what measures led to economic destruction or in just one of John McCain’s famous 2008 moron moments, the GOP wanted to do to health insurance what they’d done to finance.

One Flew Over the Wingnut

Sorry for taking up so much space everyone it’s just sometimes I feel the need to offload facts as a means to unload on wingnut ignorance and intrenched stupidity. I promise to keep my comments in the future to at most a single paragraph.

beatlesfan

check out tom hicks liverpool football club on a search engine. 378m pounds in debt because of him and his partner gillett, and he thinks he can get 800m for it.

liverpool echo newspaper

crumpet

[re=583588]keyrock[/re]: So you’re telling me that there’s a mortgage on the Rangers’ stadium, and it is insured by Fannie and Freddie, and the Rangers can’t/won’t pay?